Along dimly lit streets under flickering sodium, in overgrown rooms with tree branches poking through rotten plaster walls, in places where the dominion of mankind is uncertain, here lies the half-world, where the unreal can - at least for a while - become real.

Beside the strange wonders of Halfworld, or perhaps beneath them, like a gaping bottomless void under pristine ice, is something that hates the vague impossibilities which burp and whistle and tapdance along the edges of dreams. It has no dreams, except those of utter annihilation.

Some call it entropy, some say it's a dark spirit from before the creation, but most agree that it's the absence of being, ironically given form by the odd rules which govern Halfworld. It is deconstruction and destruction, a shuddering shadow that will promise the universe and deliver silence, the ultimate end.

This force or presence knows that to manifest its desires in reality it must influence the minds of the weak and susceptible, the angry and the inexperienced in the world of the real, Fullworld, but there are those who fight it, who push back against the empty shadow that would devour everything good and wholesome, and indeed everything else.

These men and women are called the Nothing Hunters, or sometimes the Lamplighters. They look like you and me for the most part, they have jobs and go through life much like anyone else, but each of them has a Gift. Their Gift may be juggling, or telling riddles or stories, preaching psalms of peace, or conjuring up whimsies from thin air or any one of a number of delightful arts, and they can use these Gifts to befuddle the nothing, confuse it, defeat it, and bring hope to living minds.

Nothing Hunters never know when they might be called upon to light the flames of Inspiration with the spark of their Gifts. More than one has fallen to the nothing, and there are rumours of some who even changed sides, lost in nihilistic beliefs and despair. But when one falls another may rise to take their place - or sometimes two, or sometimes none.

Their powers grow stronger in places where the nothing is most powerful, and likewise wane where they aren't needed as much, so unexpected cracks in the Halfworld letting the nothing through can be exceptionally dangerous where they feel most secure - for there they are weakest.